I thought that being a work-at-home mother would be ideal for everyone: I would get to continue pursuing my career and my little Monkey would get me home all day long… every day.

Did you see Coraline (i.e. the 2009 stop-motion 3D fantasy children’s film)? In the movie, the main character was an only child stuck with a mother and father who were so busy working from home that every noise she made was a nuisance to them. She goes into this other (fantasy) world where she has a mother who speaks to her adoringly and bakes her cakes, and a father who writes songs for her on the piano.

I don’t bake. Well, I’ll do it if I have to. And my hubby don’t write songs. But we work from home, and are constantly struggling to keep up with our work deadlines. The Monkey gets swapped back and forth between us (he in the basement, and me in the living room), depending on the type of work each of us is doing. Toys adorn both rooms, so no matter where our little 14 month old is, she has tons of stuff to play with. But it’s when the music is turned on and it’s “baby’s dance party” time, or when we run up and down the two flights of stairs with her, over and over and over and over again, that she is truly in a state of bliss.

She’s got all the quantity time in the world with her mummy and daddy. But it’s the quality time that’s not always easy to come by. When I finish my redraft of my script, I can check it off my to do list. But I can’t check off “play with baby” on my to do list. When hubby finishes editing photos for an event he shot, he can say, “I’m done” and go have a snack. But he can’t take Monkey to the park and say “I’m done”, like it’s a task he’ll never have to return to.

So we take breaks. We put the computers down when she comes to us with a book and we read together. When she’s got that bored look, we take her up and down the stairs. When she’s been cooped up inside all day, she gets a trip to the playground.

But sometimes she just has to play on her own. Sometimes the work has to get done. And in the end, it’s probably good for her that she does.

On Saturday morning, I found tooth #1 rearing its beautiful head out of my Monkey’s lower gums. As she is already 7 1/2 months old, I’ve been getting a lot of the “Ohhh, she’s not teething yet??” and “Ohhh, late teether!” and “I bet you’re glad!” which always comes off a little inappropriately, as I know these semi-strangers are referring to the tenderness of my womanly feeding spouts.

The appearance of her first tooth (not to mention her second, which started poking out this morning) put me into my very own state of nirvana. At that moment, and for the moments over the following hour or two, nothing else mattered. Our dwindling bank account, our fights, our crappy neighborhood, our exhaustion, and our general discomfort with life which comes as an overall malaise when you have the aforementioned package deal of poopy things, were no longer a problem. I was free of ickyness. Monkey had leapt into the next stage of her life’s development, and I – was – elated.

The stress of starting our own business(s) has been the icing on the cake of one stressful year and a half – getting married, having a baby, buying a house, quitting my job… starting our own businesses – all since March of ’09. It’s this pressure of making the business work, or else we’ll slowly starve to death on the streets of Hollywood, sitting in front of The GAP, asking for change, so we can buy some really mediocre pizza they sell on Hollywood Boulevard (actually, it’s not that bad, but I’m from New York, so I’m supposed to bag on it) that makes the emergence of a tooth all the more wonderful.

We will not starve… we will not go under… we will not live outside The GAP. And it’s all because of her tooth. The tooth itself won’t fix any of our problems, but it is a blatant example of the progression of life that happens no matter how much money you have, how much happiness you’re in, or how much your new business is succeeding.

Really, it’s just that, for a brief moment, the everything of life is simplified into one tiny thing – the beauty and perfection and maturation of the only thing that matters: my family.